Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"Why do there have to be so many unhappy people in the world? No wonder someone like this self-styled Patron of Humanity appears. What in the world is happening to life on this planet?"

When Dancer asked Ogi to report on his progress in contacting people, he submitted a revised name list to her, but he decided to approach Patron directly about Ms. Tachibana.

"Do you happen to recall," he asked Patron, "a small gathering about ten years ago when a young girl, whose younger brother was mentally chal- lenged, asked you a question? She wasn't one of the followers of the church.

This girl, still in her teens at the time, listened to your sermon and said her whole body was fdled with light."

Patron's pensive face, which looked like it was covered with a thin sheen of oil, came alive, the color rising.

"I do remember that," he said, his voice so suddenly transformed that Ogi nearly regretted his words, thinking they'd been too much of a shock.

"The girl told me her body and heart were fdled with light, and I could see that her skin, even the part covered by her clothes, was glowing."

Ogi recalled Ms. Tachibana's forehead, perfect for the kind of crown that adorned a Girls' Day doll, her tiny lips and chin. An image of her face as a youngster--not a particularly attractive girl-flashed through Ogi's mind.

And of light flooding through her thin, pale skin from within.

"That woman belongs to a group called the Moosbrugger Committee, which is on our list. In fact, she's the one who wrote to you. She wants to invite you to visit them. Before things become too busy with your new activities, would it be possible to fit a short meeting with the members of the committee into your schedule? She said she wanted to bring her mentally challenged brother along, too."

Ogi made up his mind to report to Ms. Tachibana that, although Patron couldn't make a firm commitment at this time, he did get the feeling he was leaning in that direction. The university library was closed, though, for a Founder's Day holiday. He phoned Mrs. Tsugane, and she told him her hus- band had received an award given in northern Europe for his designs for improved furniture for elderly patients. He was in Europe now to attend the awards ceremony, and she was bored and asked Ogi to come over to see her.

She had something she wanted to talk with him about, she added. Her voice had a force in it that couldn't be denied, so Ogi agreed to meet her Saturday afternoon at the entrance to the Culture and Sports Center.

On the appointed day, though, when she alighted from the elevator, Mrs. Tsugane wore a cold, serious expression completely in contrast with her voice on the phone. Silently, she led Ogi along a stone path heading to- ward the top of a hill right before them crowded with various cultural facili- ties and stores. Sculptures lined the narrow path, Ogi taking particular note of a combination of slabs of metal with complex reflections of the light and one mounted on a concrete base like an egg sliced in half. Elderly couples and small groups of young girls especially seemed to enjoy shaking the movable metal parts of some of the statues and stroking an almost comically old- fashioned realistic statue of an infant.

With no rhyme or reason to the way the level areas and steps were ad- joined, it was a tiring walk up the slope, and Mrs. Tsugane, lost in thought, eventually led the way to an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by a horseshoe- shaped ring of sunken stone seats; she went halfway around and began descending the south side of the hill. Without a word to Ogi, she strode off quickly toward a colony made up of a small group of residences and an apart- ment building rising up from slightly below.

She stopped at the brick entrance of the nearest residence, surrounded by yew trees, and for the first time seemed to relax. She had Ogi wait at the foyer as she went in, bustling noisily just past the door and then inviting him in. A spacious living room/kitchen greeted Ogi, a sparse woods visible on a steep slope outside. The lace curtain on the inset window was drawn, block- ing the unusually strong sunlight that had made them both perspire on the walk over. Ogi sat down on a sofa, his position affording him an angled view of the scenery to his right, and gazed at the framed picture hanging on the wall in front of him, a colored print of a railroad station constructed of iron, viewed from the front, and a plan, drawn in pencil, that continued on the same paper.

"This is where I escape to," said Mrs. Tsugane, catching what Ogi was looking at as she brought in a liter bottle of Evian and two fluted glasses. "My husband picked that up in France. He has a number of sketches of railway bridges too, all of which have a pagoda on them, obviously not of practical use but more as a type of monument."

"It's from the end of the nineteenth century, around the time the Eiffel Tower was built," Ogi said, noting the date on the print.

"That was the age when metal structures had a religious feel to them,"

Mrs. Tsugane said. She sat down on the sofa, waiting for Ogi's gaze to move from the print to her. "It's been so many years, but I wonder what happened to my missing panties? How about telling me the details?"

Ogi blushed, and felt like he was left dangling stupidly in the air. He fingered the Evian bottle on the low table, wondering how he should begin, as Mrs. Tsugane leaned forward and stretched out her hand as if she were about to slap his knee. Instead, she leaned back and said, in an intelligent, serious tone, "Please don't get angry, but just hear me out. I'm not doing this to have fun at your expense. It's just that recently I feel anxious, as if I'm stuck in a rut, and I feel a lot of nostalgia for those old days, and for the high school student who was so curious about my panties. I can imagine how tough it must have been for you, with your brother and his wife always leaving you out of their activities. And I wonder why I didn't do anything to help include you."

"The other day, after I got back to my apartment, I thought a lot about that," Ogi said. "Back then I just put your panties on and felt a gentle calm come over me and went to sleep… but I can't remember at all what hap- pened the next morning."

His words felt forced to him, a sense of reality missing from them. He blushed even more, afraid she might think he wasn't telling the truth, and took a sip of water. But Mrs. Tsugane seemed to accept everything he said.

She even inclined her head coyly to one side.

"This might be a naive question, but when a young man wears a woman's panties-assuming everything's normal with him-don't things get out of hand?"

"Not for me. Everything settled down nicely. It felt like my whole body was cocooned in a fluffy softness, and I slept soundly."

As she listened to Ogi, a yawn came to her flushed, small, round face, taking Ogi by surprise. Despite this, she appeared still to be deep in thought, and finally said, in a low voice, "Maybe you wanted to become a girl, you poor thing."

That certainly made sense, Ogi mused, when you consider how his geni- tals subsided and how calmly he slept after putting the panties on. Having confessed, his face red and drooping, Ogi realized that he might seem to be enjoying a kind of masochistic solace in all this, which made him blush all the more.

Mrs. Tsugane stared steadily at him for a time, then gulped and, steel- ing herself, made a decisive announcement.

"Certainly you don't strike me as girlish now. The subconscious desires you had as a young boy are still with us, inside your trousers. And the girl I used to be and the woman I am right now are very happy, I can tell you. Your brother and sister-in-law teased me no end about the panty incident, but it also brought on some erotic dreams. Why don't we reward our formerly naive selves? What do you say? Let's do it!"